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Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has launched an online shop that could be considered a conceptual art piece itself. The shop sells what Walker calls “intangibles”—ephemeral, digital commodities such as personalized ringtones or custom avatars to use on social media. Prices range from $1.99 to nearly $4,000, for a virtual ocean-view property on the platform Second Life.

Part of the point of the shop is to call into question the nature of value itself: We pay for “ephemeral” things all the time when we go to concerts, movies or upscale restaurants. Why should the idea of buying a Snapchat message be any different?

As we live ever more digital lives, watch for more creatives to blur the lines between functional tech and highbrow culture. Amid endless streams of data, assigning value to a fleeting digital moment is “a kind of consumerism that is a little bit of anti-consumerism,” said Artsy curator Christine Kuan.

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